Scottish Election Study 2021-2025

苏格兰议会第六次选举定于2021年5月6日举行。苏格兰选举已经被视为重要的全国选举；自2014年独立公投以来，它们对苏格兰的未来具有了更重要的意义。因此，我们建议进行苏格兰选举研究（SES） 2021-25：这既是一项针对此次关键竞选的全国性选举研究，也是一次追踪选举前后民意的机会。对英国议会选举进行了20年的研究，得出了一些结论。首先，当然，苏格兰的投票已经与支持独立紧密联系在一起。其次，这并不是事情的全部。其他因素，特别是政府在权力下放问题上的表现，以及其他政党是否愿意支持苏格兰对抗威斯敏斯特的看法，也发挥了作用。第三，权力下放的选举对选民很重要。人们普遍认为，这并不是一个与小党派较量的机会，也不是对威斯敏斯特政府的一次免费打击：它们主要是关于选择一个苏格兰政府。然而，重大问题仍然存在——关于这次选举、权力下放和苏格兰宪法的未来。其中一些原因是，这将是自2019冠状病毒病大流行和英国脱欧以来英国举行的首次重大选举。这些会使有关独立的争论边缘化还是加剧？另一些则与苏格兰政治和选举研究中正在进行的或新的辩论有关。选民如何决定哪一级政府对苏格兰的经济、学校和医院负责，他们是奖励还是惩罚合适的人？苏格兰政府是否对其宣言承诺负责，还是这一切都被独立所掩盖？在“情感两极分化”方面，苏格兰是否变得与美国相似了？在这个地方，人们不仅对独立持不同意见，而且对另一方抱有成见、不信任甚至憎恨？苏格兰议会选举的低投票率记录是选民的不感兴趣还是政党的竞选行为的结果？为了解决这些问题和其他问题，我们提出了一系列活动，这些活动产生的数据可以迅速与更广泛的学术界共享。第一个是核心选举研究，在2021年大选的最后一个月和之后的两周内对4000名苏格兰人进行了两波调查。这包含了关于投票行为、对选举的期望和评估的核心问题，以及帮助我们解释投票选择的众多背景和态度措施。人们如何投票在一定程度上也取决于在两次选举之间形成的观点和看法。我们知道选民会改变他们对领导人、政党和政府的看法。推动这一趋势的因素——事件、政府绩效、新信息、社会互动等等——往往不太清楚。我们提出了一个全新的苏格兰意见（SCOOP）监测，每年进行三次简短的调查。这使我们能够在一个关键时期跟踪舆论，并找出选举选择的长期动态。它还为我们自己和社区的问题和实验提供了一个工具，例如，评估两极分化的程度，或者人们在获得信息时做出审慎决定的程度。SES一揽子计划包含其他几个组成部分：a)选举代理人调查，以评估本次（covid -19后）选举中的竞选活动，以及它与威斯敏斯特选举的不同之处；B)面向记者、从业人员、教师和公众的资源，包括选区简介、地图、简报、教材和快速获取数据；c)与威尔士和北爱尔兰选举研究小组在问卷内容、分析和分发方面进行了前所未有的合作；d)在这种困难的环境下为选举代表进行能力建设，包括“权力下放选举行为冬季学校”，以教授最佳实践，提供指导和建立网络

The sixth election to the Scottish Parliament is scheduled for 6 May 2021. Scottish elections were already seen both as important and as national elections; since the independence referendum in 2014 they have taken on added significance for Scotland's future. We therefore propose the Scottish Election Study (SES) 2021-25: both a national election study for this key contest and an opportunity to track opinion into and beyond the election.Two decades of studying Holyrood elections have generated several findings. First, of course, voting in Scotland has become closely aligned with support for independence. Second, this is not the whole story. Other factors, notably the performance of the government on devolved issues and the perceptions of the other parties as willing to stand up for Scotland against Westminster, also play a role. Third, devolved elections matter to voters. They are not widely seen as a chance to take a punt on smaller parties or a free hit at the Westminster government: they are primarily about choosing a Scottish government. Big questions remain, however - about this election, about devolution and about Scotland's constitutional future. Some of these derive from the fact that this will be the first major British election since the Covid-19 pandemic and the UK's departure from the European Union. Will these sideline or intensify the arguments about independence? Others relate to ongoing or new debates in research on Scottish politics and elections. How do voters decide which level of government is responsible for the state of Scotland's economy, schools and hospitals, and do they reward or punish the right people? Is the Scottish government held accountable for its manifesto pledges or is this all overshadowed by independence? Has Scotland come to resemble the US in terms of 'affective polarisation': a place in which people not only disagree about independence but stereotype, distrust or even hate the other side? Is the poor turnout record at Scottish Parliament elections the result of voters' uninterest or parties' campaigning behaviour? To address these and other questions, we propose a range of activities generating data to be swiftly shared with the wider academic community. The first is the core Election Study, a two-wave survey of 4,000 Scots conducted in the last month of the 2021 campaign and in the fortnight afterwards. This contains core questions on voting behaviour, expectations of and assessments of the election, as well as numerous measures of background and attitudes helping us to explain vote choices. How people vote also depends in part on opinions and perceptions shaped in the years between elections. We know voters change their minds about leaders, parties and governments. What drives this - events, government performance, new information, social interactions, and so on - is often less clear. We propose a brand new SCOttish OPinion (SCOOP) monitor, three short surveys per year. This enables us to track opinion over a critical period as well as to pick out the long-term dynamics of electoral choice. It also provides a vehicle for our own and the community's questions and experiments, evaluating, for instance, the extent of polarisation or how far people make deliberative decisions when presented with information.The SES package contains several other components:a) election agent surveys to evaluate campaigning in this (post-Covid-19) election and how it differs from Westminster elections;b) resources for journalists, practitioners, teachers and the public, including constituency profiles, maps, briefing papers, teaching materials and quick access to data;c) unprecedented collaboration with the Welsh and Northern Irish Election Study teams on questionnaire content, analysis and dissemination;d) capacity building for ECRs in this difficult climate, including Winter Schools on Devolved Electoral Behaviour to teach best practice, offer mentorship and build networks